Heretofore, in the field of pharmaceutical development and research and others, a solution in which a sample is dissolved is injected into a cylindrical container called a micro-tube and a plurality of such micro-tubes are stored vertically in a storage rack, e.g., a storage rack partitioned into 96 sections (8 rows by 12 columns) (referred to as a ‘96-tube rack hereinafter) as shown in FIG. 15A to store and convey the samples.
Recently, there is also known a storage rack having 384 sections in total (16 rows by 24 columns) as shown in FIG. 15B (referred to as a ‘384-tube rack’ hereinafter) for storing smaller micro-tubes, i.e., super micro-tubes, to store many more samples in the rack having the same outer shape and dimensions as the 96-tube rack conforming to the SBS (Society for Biomolecular Screening) Standard (see description of European Patent Application Laid Open No. 1361440 (FIG. 6) and Japanese Patent Publication No. 3421252 (Paragraph 5 in Page 2)).
Still more, there is known a stationary picking system 700 for picking up a predetermined micro-tube by conveying the 96-tube rack as shown in FIG. 16 (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,838,051).